(View of the Kremlin from across the Moskva River, 2012)

In 1963, Jimmy Soul sang; “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, for my personal point of view get an ugly girl to marry you…….”  This advice is very prescient for Paul Brightman, alias Grant Anderson in Joseph Finder’s latest spell binding novel, THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER.  Brightman, an analyst and investor at Aquinnah Capital in Manhattan marries a photographer named Tatiyana Belkin.  It turns out she is the daughter of Russian oligarch, Arkady Galkin who runs AGF, a financial investment firm, also in New York City.  From the outset, Finder has hooked the reader as he has done in his sixteen previous suspense novels.

The author starts the novel rather placidly, but within a few pages a violent scene plays itself out as Grant Anderson, a boat builder is aboard his friend Lyle Bourdeaux’s boat substituting for him to lead a fishing excursion for a customer named Frederick Newman.  We soon learn that Newman was sent by a Russian oligarch to kill him.  Anderson turns the tide on Newman and after escaping Newman’s grip and gun, feeds him to the sharks.  It turns out that Anderson is not who he appears to be, having arrived in Derryfield, New Hampshire five years earlier and learned the boat building trade from “Old Man Casey,” and becomes involved with a teacher named Sarah Harrison.  But Anderson has a past, with a different name, and a few hours later two Russian thugs come to his house and kill his friend Alec Wood, a local policeman.  The FBI immediately becomes involved, and Anderson finds himself on the run from two divergent groups.

(The superyacht Amadea in Coronado, Calif., on June 27, 2022)

Finder organizes his novel by alternating between the past and the present over a six year period as he engages in sudden shifts in time.  “It’s Finder’s very effective method of ramping up threat and suspense. The revelations of modern espionage here—like ‘the only uncrackable safe is one that no one can find to crack’—come in quick bursts of surprise, seasoned by a gently sardonic viewpoint.”  He takes the reader back and introduces Paul Brightman who has a successful career and a rising star on Wall Street until he meets Tatiyana Belkin who he immediately falls in love with, unbeknownst to him she is the daughter of a Russian oligarch who appears to work  for the Kremlin.  Soon Aquinnah Capital goes under, and Arkady Galkin offers Brightman a job tripling his pay.   He will be approached by Mark Addison, an FBI agent who investigated Russian oligarchs and how they laundered their money and convinces Brightman to engage in aspects of spy craft for the government.  Brightman is in a quandary; he loves Tatiyana whom he marries but finds himself investigating his father in law.

It is easy to see where this is going.  Brightman takes on a new identity, that of Grant Anderson to escape Galkin’s revenge.  The novel moves quickly from scene to scene as first Anderson is on the run, and we are filled with further background pertaining to his real identity.  Finder keeps the reader on the edge of his seat as each scene unfolds.  However, at times the author makes assumptions without enough detailed explanation.  For example, when Brightman is first approached by Addison to engage in “dirty work” for the FBI he agrees almost without question, not weighing the possible risks enough and how it would impact his personal life.

(Author, Joseph Finder)

Finder’s description of the life of a Russian oligarch is fascinating and provides the reader a great deal of insight as to how they conduct their businesses and private life.  As Finder relates in a January 28, 2025, interview on NPR; “It is real. It is real. But, you know, what’s interesting about these oligarchs is that they are billionaires. They own sports teams. They are also patrons of the art in the U.S. They are sort of – I call them the new Medicis. And they are – and were, I should say – princes of the realm, princes of capitalism, in a sense, until the war in Ukraine began. And then they were persona non grata. They – overnight, they were forced out of the country. And this transformation – going from being somebody that you wanted on the board of your museum or your hospital or your university to someone who you wouldn’t acknowledge was, to me, humanly fascinating, and it made this an interesting story to tell.”

Another interesting aspect of the novel that Finder develops is how easily a person can disappear in the digital age.  The novel relates that the secret these days is to find a small town where they don’t have CCTV cameras and to live a life based on cash. Do not open a bank account. Or if you open a bank account, don’t earn any interest.  The key is not to pay taxes, because once the IRS learns who you are they are very good at tracking you down.  Further, Brightman/Anderson is able to employ many of the skills his “off the grid father” taught him.  It is clear that Finder has conducted a great deal of research to make his story authentic. 

Sometimes the novel becomes a bit complicated, but in the end all plot lines come neatly together in this ever surprising plot as Paul will have to unravel a decades-old conspiracy that involves the highest members of government.  This is not a novel about espionage as such; it has more to do with how espionage is being financed. It is, if you can believe the story, whose ending is not predictable, but in the end rather convincing in true Finder style.

(The Kremlin)